Emily has completed the Level 5 Coaching and Mentoring with Synergia and it has helped her to begin to develop a programme of coaching throughout the whole school.

Commenting on the course, Emily said: “We were keen to develop a coaching culture in the school; I had done some coaching training before but not to this level. We saw the course as a way of developing our coaching expertise to help with our ambition – and this is why we took on Synergia to deliver the training to us.

Nine of us have undertaken the level 5 course and the headmaster the level 7 course. We felt it was important that it wasn’t just the senior team that did the course, but everyone should have an understanding of coaching and mentoring. As a school we are always looking at how we can develop our pupils more independently and support staff to take control over their own development.

“At Bethany School since completing the course we have been exploring ways of developing our coaching culture. Primarily the initial focus for this has been on developing systems to encourage pupils to take more responsibility for their own growth and development. We have implemented a new approach to target setting and introduced some one to one academic coaching between pupils and staff.”

Emily added: “One key thing the course has taught me is to be a better communicator; it’s made me better at listening to other people. I have learned to encourage them to find their own solutions rather than coming to me to always solve them. I have adapted my approach to line management. It’s made me all round better at my job because I have more of an understanding of how to truly listen to people and encourage them to set their own targets for development.”

“This is an exciting time for us as a school on our coaching journey: we have further projects under way to build on our use of coaching throughout the whole school. We have a group of staff who are training pupils to peer coach. We have another group of staff who are looking at how we can use a coaching model to improve our CPD offer for teaching staff and strengthen performance management structures for all staff.”

Bethany School will be enrolling more members of staff on to a Synergia course in the coming year.